His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [116]
From the first day of shooting, Mogambo, a joint British and American production, was beset with unending difficulties. Temperatures soared to 130 degrees in the baked clay wastelands; alkali dust covered everyone; sleep was impossible because of bellowing hippos and howling hyenas. Pregnant, Ava suffered miserable morning sickness and quarreled constantly with Frank, who was bored and restless and unable to think of anything else but the role of Maggio.
To make matters even more unbearable, Ava did not get along with the director, John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath, Tobacco Road, How Green Was My Valley), who was gruff and harsh and refused to treat her like an MGM movie queen. She embarrassed him when he introduced her to the British governor and his wife.
“Ava, why don’t you tell the governor what you see in this one-hundred-twenty-pound runt you’re married to,” Ford said.
“Well,” said Ava, “there’s only ten pounds of Frank but there’s one hundred and ten pounds of cock!”
Ford wanted to kill her, but the governor and his wife roared with laughter. After a few such incidents the director developed a certain appreciation of his star and they soon became good friends. “She was a real trouper,” he said later. “She was unhappy over Sinatra, but she worked her ass off just the same. I loved her.”
Grace Kelly, too, was shocked at first by Ava’s total lack of restraint, her uninhibited swearing, and the way she and Frank would take out their anger toward each other on whoever was standing around. “Ava is such a mess, it’s unbelievable,” Grace wrote in a letter to a friend. “Right now they are putting up a new tent for her—she just didn’t like the other one because it was old—her tent is right next to mine—so I can hear all of the screaming and yelling.”
Five days later Frank received a cable from the From Here to Eternity producer, Buddy Adler, to appear for a screen test. There was no offer to pay his expenses from Africa to California, but Frank did not hesitate. Charging the round-trip flight to Ava’s MGM account, he left immediately for Hollywood.
“For the test, I played the saloon scene where Maggio shakes dice with the olives and the scene where he’s found drunk outside the Royal Hawaiian Hotel,” he said. “I was scared to death.”
Adler was surprised to see Frank less than thirty-six hours after cabling him. “I was a little startled when I gave him the script of the drunk scene and he handed it back. ‘I don’t need this,’ he said. ‘I’ve read it many times.’ I didn’t think he had a chance anyway, so I said, ‘Well, okay.’ Since his was the last test of the day, I didn’t intend going down on the stage. But I got a call from Fred Zinnemann, ‘You’d better come down here. You’ll see something unbelievable. I already have it in the camera. I’m not using film this time. But I want you to see it.’
“Frank thought he was making another take—and he was terrific. I thought to myself, if he’s like that in the movie, it’s a sure Academy Award. But we had to have Harry Cohn’s okay on casting, and he was out of town. So Frank went back to Africa.”
“I thought I’d collapse waiting for reaction to that test,” said Sinatra later. “My agent sent word that Columbia was testing some other fellows, among them some fine stage actors. My chin hit my knees, and I gave up. Ava was wonderful at cheering me up, and said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t quit just because you got one telegram.’ Clark Gable kept saying, ‘Relax, skipper. Have a little drink and everything will be all right.’ ”
When Harry Cohn came back to town, he wanted to meet Eli Wallach and test him for the part. Columbia contacted Peter Witt, Wallach’s film agent, and flew the actor in from New York where he was starring on Broadway in The Rose Tattoo.
“That was quite an experience,” said Eli Wallach. “I walked into Cohn’s office and he said, ‘He